Amazon’s $49 data plan is a one-year-only deal

Thought that the optional $49 4G data plan for a year that Amazon announced with the Kindle Fire HD was tood good to be true? You’re not the only one. An interested Kindle owner called up Amazon and asked what happens when the first year is over. He shared his results with ZDNet, and it sounds like Kindle Fire owners are going to get a nasty rate increase after a year. From Amazon:

The $49.99 data package is only available for the first year of service. The data plans after one year will change accordingly to the plans offered by the service provider AT&T.

At this time, there are no special data plans offered by AT&T for Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ after the first year. AT&T provides their own data plans and all this information has been updated in the AT&T website.

We’ve known that Amazon isn’t making money off Kindle hardware, and may even be subsidizing the tablets, but an answer like this raises the possibility of Amazon even subsidizing the Kindle data plan. For instance, AT&T currently offers three 4G data plans for iPads. The cheapest costs $15 for 250MB a month, and the most expensive plan nets 5GB of data for $50. In light of those prices, Amazon’s offer is an excellent bargain, but it might not be for long.